Pages

Friday, October 29, 2010

Book Beginings (my 500th post)

Book Beginnings has a new home and is now hosted by Katy at a Few More Pages.

How to participate:All you have to do is share the first line of the book you are currently reading on your blog or in the comments. Include the title and the author so we know what you're reading (and can go pick up a copy if it sounds good!). Then, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line, and let us know if you liked or did not like the sentence (thanks to Rose City Reader for inspiring this meme). The link-up will be here atA Few More Pages every Friday.

"At exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning, on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, had just sat down at her place in the plant office and was turning her head to speak to the girl at the next desk."

The first line is a great example of how the book is written: no frills, no holding back, and very heavy in details. The six people that Hersey interviewed for this book seem to have remembered every little thing that happened during the day the atomic bomb was dropped! I am only 43 pages into John Hersey's Hiroshima. This is a book I have meant to read for a couple decades (no kidding). So far it's pretty good, but it isn't gripping me the way I thought it would. However, I am going to keep going; it's such a short book it shouldn't take me too long to finish.

I have read Hiroshima and think you'll be glad you read it. Some books linger, and for me this was one of them.

The book I'm ABOUT to be reading (soon) starts like this:

September means pressed white shirts. New socks. School shoes. Rigidly pleated skirts. "Those pleats. That's what morality looks like," one of the history teachers said once in class. He was young and exciting, and he was talking about the Inquisition, which seemed to give him a particular thrill. "That pleat right there," he said with an arch smile, pointing to one of the girls' freshly pressed skirts. "That's morality for you." No one knew exactly what he meant. But all of the girls laughed and shifted a little sideways in their seats.

That's exactly how far I've read in the book so far, since I just this minute brought it in from the mail that arrived today. The book is Hummingbirds by Joshua Gaylord, and I have YOU to thank for it, Helen! I look forward to reading it and will probably post something about it on my blog in an hour or so.

Congrats on 500 posts! I read Hiroshima a couple of weeks ago and thought it was a powerful read. Another similar book that I read years ago that affected me even more profoundly was Hiroshima Diary by Michihiko Hachiya. It's the journal of a Japanese physician during the two months after the bombing.

The first book by John Hersey that I read was probably "A Bell for Adano." I've also read "A Single Pebble" and "Hiroshima" and, most recently, "Blues," about bluefins and fishing -- it was a bit slow.